Today, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) releases its March 2018 Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy. The report includes MedPAC’s analyses of payment adequacy in fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare and reviews the status of Medicare Advantage (MA) and the prescription drug benefit, Part D. MedPAC also recommends changing the way Medicare pays for clinician services in FFS by moving beyond the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), recommends changes to MA and Part D to improve the equity and efficiency of those programs, and responds to a Congressional mandate on telehealth in Medicare. In the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, Congress enacted several policies that are similar to recommendations contained in this report. You may go to our website at www.medpac.gov to view the report, or follow the links below.
March 2018 Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy
[pbutton url=”https://medpac.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d2cc55bf8674c6d874545c3c8&id=cae28d5e5d&e=c25de588b7″ text=”Executive Summary” new_window=”yes”]
Chapter 1: Context for Medicare payment policy and online-only appendixes
Chapter 2: Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments in fee-for-service Medicare
Chapter 3: Hospital inpatient and outpatient services
Chapter 4: Physician and other health professional services
Chapter 5: Ambulatory surgical center services
Chapter 6: Outpatient dialysis services
Chapter 7: Post-acute care: Increasing the equity of Medicare’s payments within each setting
Chapter 8: Skilled nursing facility services
Chapter 9: Home health care services
Chapter 10: Inpatient rehabilitation facility services
Chapter 11: Long-term care hospital services
Chapter 12: Hospice services
Chapter 13: The Medicare Advantage program: Status report
Chapter 14: The Medicare prescription drug program (Part D): Status report and online-only appendixes
Chapter 15: Moving beyond the Merit-based Incentive Payment System
Chapter 16: Mandated report: Telehealth services and the Medicare program and online-only appendixes
Appendix A: Commissioners’ voting on recommendations